Talking about environmental protection printing

With the advancement of technology and market development, China's printing industry has made great progress in recent years: the four major printing methods have been unequaled, post-press binding automation, and color desktop publishing systems have been widely used. The openness and digitization of the document processing system have become the basic features of the prepress system. The direct plate making technology and digital printing have become the development direction of the printing and publishing industry, and the environmental protection regulations related to the printing industry are constantly improving. However, compared with the internationally developed regions, there is still a big gap between the environmental protection issues of printing equipment, such as R&D and production, environmental pollution in printing shops, and printing supplies, especially the largest amount of printing ink and printing paper. Everything has brought tremendous challenges and opportunities to the development of China's printing industry.

For printing consumables, especially printing inks, it is a great opportunity to develop and produce various new materials that meet the requirements of environmental protection. Fortunately, in the field of printing inks, the transformation of the original formulas, production processes, raw materials, and drying methods has been mentioned on the agenda from the current industry perspective.

Injury of ink

Ink is the largest source of pollution in the printing industry. The annual output of ink in the world has reached 3 million tons. Annual global emissions of organic volatile compounds (VOC) caused by ink have reached hundreds of thousands of tons. These organic volatiles can form a more serious greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide, and they can form oxides and photochemical smog under the irradiation of the sun, seriously polluting the atmosphere and affecting people's health. In addition, foods, toys and other packaging and printing ordinary ink heavy metals and other harmful components of the human body will also directly harm the health of consumers.

Impact on human health

Printing inks consist of pigments, binders, solvents, and adjuvants. Among them, organic solvents and heavy metal elements cause serious damage to the human body. There are two kinds of pigment in the ink - inorganic and organic, both insoluble in water and other media, and has a distinctive color and stability. Some inorganic pigments contain lead, chromium, copper, mercury and other heavy metal elements, which have certain toxicity and can not be used for printing food packaging and children's toys. Some organic pigments contain biphenyl rubber and have carcinogenic components and should be strictly prohibited. Organic solvents can dissolve many natural resins and synthetic resins. They are important components of various inks, but some of them can damage human and subcutaneous fats. Long-term exposure can make skin dry and rough. If it penetrates skin or blood vessels, it can endanger people with blood. Hematocrit and hematopoietic function; being sucked into the airway, bronchus, lungs, or through blood vessels, lymphatic vessels to other organs, and may even cause chronic body poisoning. In the printing of composite packaging materials, a large amount of inks, organic solvents, and adhesives are used. Although these excipients are not in direct contact with foods, certain toxic substances may migrate into foods during the process of food packaging and storage, thus endangering people’s health. .

In daily life, we can often see people wrap newspapers in the absence of suitable materials, or read books and eat food by hand while turning pages. In fact, it does not seem to be a big problem, but in fact, harmful substances in printing inks are easily transmitted to the human body. Over time, it will surely affect people's health, and it cannot be ignored. Developing good living habits is also a tribute to environmental protection.

Impact on environmental quality

Draining water-based cleaning inks and offset fountain solutions can contaminate the water. The disposal of industrial waste such as printed materials and ink containers is also very tricky.

In addition, in actual production, besides the natural volatilization of solvents, the failures that occur in ink applications, such as the phenomenon of "ink flying" that has plagued the printing industry for many years, are also affected. The phenomenon of ink flying is because when the printing press rotates at high speed, the ink film between the ink rollers is split and elongated, resulting in a broken piece. Under the effect of the surface tension of the ink, these pieces shrink and form a large number of spherical small ink droplets scattered in the air. , the so-called flying ink phenomenon. The major harms that the flying ink phenomenon brings to the printing process are mainly manifested in the following aspects: It causes pollution to the environment, adversely affects the product quality, and causes long-term damage to human health.

The emission of harmful gases in the printing industry, the use of hazardous liquids and solids, and the emission of wastes pose a serious threat to human health and the living environment. This environmental issue not only involves the future of human civilization, but also involves the survival and development of the enterprise. Therefore, the environmental protection issue of the printing industry is bound to become a difficult and long-lasting environmental protection work.

In foreign countries, in order to control pollution, some countries have established a series of laws and regulations such as the "Labor and Health Law" and "Organic Solvent Discharge Law." These laws and regulations determine the research and development direction of printing production processes and inks. Under the pressure of these environmental protection laws, research departments and manufacturers in the foreign printing industry have to research and develop solvent-free inks, that is, no volatile or less volatile inks.

Although these more stringent environmental protection laws are now only adopted in Europe and the United States, it should be foreseen that sooner or later they will become benchmarks for environmental protection laws in various countries in the world.

Paper recycling and environmental issues

Paper is the largest consumable for printing plants. To truly realize environmental protection printing in China, we must start with paper. The printing and production plants should also make full use of their intelligence and intelligence to recycle paper, improve corporate profits and achieve green printing.

According to statistics, China’s forest coverage rate is only one-fourth of the world’s average, China’s forests have decreased by 23% within 10 years, and Kovar’s stock volume has decreased by 50%. Yunnan’s natural forests in Xishuangbanna have been used annually since the 1950s. Ten thousand hectares disappeared. At that time, 55% of the original forest cover has now been reduced by 1/2.

With recycled paper, paper that has been reprocessed after proper processing is called eco-friendly paper. There are many advantages to making paper from waste paper. Each recycling of 1 ton of waste paper can reconstruct 800 kg of good paper, save 17 trees, save 3 cubic meters of landfill space, and save more than 50% of papermaking energy and 35% of water pollution. It is particularly important to make full use of resources to protect the ecological environment and bring benefits to papermaking companies. Therefore, waste paper has become one of the raw material sources for the paper industry, and it has attracted increasing attention.

Each sheet can be recycled at least twice. Office paper, old envelopes, stationery, notebooks, books, newspapers, advertising papers, cargo boxes, carton boxes, paper tableware, etc. After the first recycling, they can be reprinted into books, manuscript papers, business cards, notes, etc. . After the second recovery, toilet paper can also be made.

We often see two different symbols on some recycled paper prints. Is there any difference between them? The figure above represents that the paper has been recycled and is itself recycled paper; the figure below represents that the paper can be recycled, but it is not recycled paper itself. Many people may not be very clear about their meaning, and they have not even noticed their existence. Then, as far as possible from now on, pay attention to environmental protection around the paper, and take the lead for more people to take care of nature.

In addition, it is worth mentioning that the current printing of color magazines, advertising leaflets and other commonly used offset coated paper, commonly known as coated paper. This kind of paper looks bright and bright, giving people a beautiful enjoyment. However, you can know that because of the special texture and printing technology of coated paper, recycling is not so easy. It seems that there are sometimes contradictions between the United States and the environment. Although this contradiction is to some extent a symbol of the progress of human civilization, people have also accepted its existence, but at the same time expect that more people will be able to recognize the contradictions and constantly try to reconstruct the contradictions.

Author: Caojing Kai

Reprinted from: Chinese Brands and Anti-counterfeiting